IT was hardly to be expected that
the Superintendent could escape criticism of his method of handling his
men. To him the work was ever first, before all else, and he, therefore,
demanded and expected from his men loyalty, sincere and complete. And
this, as a rule, he received. Occasionally, however, it was his misfortune
to find among the ranks of his workers the lazy, the shiftless, the
selfish, the unfaithful, and with these he was relentlessly severe. A minister
repeats with great delight a story he once heard from the Superintendent:

"I remember him telling me of a
student whose zeal was less than his indolence. He was in charge of a
mission somewhere near Regina, and lived in rooms which were attached to
the church. Dr. Robertson drove over one morning, knowing that he was due
to preach in an outlying station ten miles away at eleven o’clock.

"‘I knocked at the outer door at ten
o’clock, sir, and when I got no answer I concluded that he had started on
his journey. However, I opened the door and walked in. I went upstairs and
rapped on the door of his bedroom. I heard a sleepy voice say, "Come in,"
and I opened the door and found him yet in bed. He preached that morning
without his breakfast, sir.’"

A lazy minister or missionary, and
he, alas, is not altogether a rara aris, drew his unmeasured
contempt. Writing to a Western Convener, he thus discourses in regard to
ministers of this class:

"I fear that the indifference you
refer to in ministerial ranks is not confined to Kirkwall and Strabane; I
meet it widely, and I am inclined to think it is doing more harm than the
Higher Criticism. Men who work hard themselves are intolerant of idle and
lazy ministers. Men appreciate an industrious, hard-working minister, and
they despise the lazy slouch. But how are you to get such men retired ?
They will not resign, they cannot work, to beg they are ashamed."

In a British Columbia mining town in
the Boundary Country, no end of trouble might have been saved had the
missionary in charge been simply faithful to his duty. As it was, he
shirked, to the permanent injury of the congregation and of the cause of
religion in that town. The Superintendent visited the town a little later.
The missionary then in charge tells the story:

"A year before, a young man had been
in charge, and had been exceedingly popular. All agreed that if Blank had
just said ‘build a church,’ the church would have been built with little
trouble and no strife. Besides, the town was then in its most prosperous
condition. That was the tide in the affairs that was missed. But Blank had
not ‘bothered.’ Indeed, Dr. Robertson had heard that he had said he did
not want to meddle with money matters. How the Doctor did hold this up to
scorn! ‘Didn’t want to meddle with money matters! A very fine sort of
gentleman, indeed! None of your coarse-grained, commercial sort. Didn’t
want to meddle! He was too downright lazy. That is what was the
matter with him. Popular preacher! Liked afternoon teas, I suppose. Liked
the ladies to tell him how well he had preached on Sunday. But to build a
church! No, he was of too fine, ethereal material to meddle with such
mundane matters. What did we pay him for anyway? What did we send him here
for? To have a good times? To be popular? That’s not the kind of man we
want in these mountains.’"

And, indeed, it added not a little
to the Superintendent’s burden that he had to assume the load too often
that these men refused to bear. While he was full of encouragement for the
"tenderfoot," he had little sympathy with a shirker, and exerted himself
to develop in his men that indifference to discomfort, toil, and even
danger, that was so conspicuous a characteristic of himself.

"Talking with a whining student one
day," says one of his Conveners, "who was relating what he considered
hardships in the way of uncomfortable beds in which there were crawling
things, and irregular meals not always prepared in the most tasty form,
the Superintendent began very sympathetically telling some of his own
experiences. Sleeping one night in a dug-out, wrapped in his blanket on
the clay floor which was several feet below the surface of the ground, he
felt cold, clammy things on his neck and face. He would brush them off and
turn over, and by the time he was getting off to sleep again there would
be another visitation, and so he kept brushing them away the whole night.

"‘And what were these things?’ asked
the wondering student.

"‘Well, you see the floor was two
feet below the ground, and there was an inclined approach cut out towards
the door. The ground was worn away several inches lower than the door, and
the lizards would fall over the edge of the cutting and crawl under the
door, and during the night creep over the floor. And these lizards were
enjoying a warm nest on my neck and face.’

"The poor student stood horrified.
The Superintendent enthused for a few moments on lice and lizards and
snakes, as though encounters therewith were as valuable as theology in a
true missionary’s education, and the complaining dude subsided. His
hardships vanished into thin air. He was rebuked and shamed, but could not
reply, and the conversation drifted to other themes."

Writing to one of his Western
Conveners, he descants thus severely upon the lack of heroism in some of
the students of this present age:

"This afternoon, without giving your
name, I told the students that there was need of a Professor of Ethics in
our Theological Colleges to teach men that when work was not done pay was
not to be expected. I find that two or three men that shirked work and
were not paid, have been poisoning the minds of men against the West.

In the ordinary student of to-day there is a good deal
of poltroonery, and hence cold frightens him when any Northwest point is
mentioned."

Greatly disturbed over the failure
of men to keep appointments, he wrote to the Rev. C. W. Gordon, who was at
that time assisting him in his work, one day as follows:

"Why would not A— go to Melita? M—
would do good work there, but he seems to be afraid of getting too much
work to do. His grandmother, mother, aunt, and the whole connection were
particularly severe on men broad in their theology, or in search of an
easy berth—it would be a pity if they have raised an over-fastidious man
under their own roof. But try him."

The lash of sarcasm once fell sharp
and keen upon a student whose intellectual indolence and a certain fatal
facility of speech led him to suppose that no serious preparation was
necessary for his sermons on the Lord’s Day. It was after a meeting of a
British Columbia Presbytery, and the Superintendent was chatting
informally with a number of the men, that methods of preparing sermons
came up for discussion. One said he carefully wrote his sermons and
generally read them. This particular student was loud in his condemnation
of this laborious method, stating that he never read his sermons. The
Superintendent looked at him steadily and then blandly asked, "Mr. Blank,
do you ever read anything?" The student lapsed into silence and the
subject was speedily changed.

His demand for absolute devotion
wrought in him a pity not unmingled with contempt for the man who was
determined at all costs to enter upon the married state. With the
Superintendent, even the sacred and inalienable right of a man to marry
was held to be hardly a sufficient justification for his refusal to take a
difficult field demanding the service of an unmarried man. With the
Apostle Paul, he considered the present distress sufficiently severe to
warrant a postponement of marriage.

"What is the meaning," he used to
say, "of this unseemly haste on the part of our graduates to be married?
One would think that they considered the ministry chiefly as a
stepping-stone to matrimony. Can they not wait a year or two?"

A young minister who had rendered
fine service in the mission field and was now the pastor of a settled
congregation, tells the following story:

"When he had made several remarks
which seemed to be designedly personal, I said:

"‘Well, Doctor, it is not at all
necessary for you to warn me against that mistake. I have no
intention of entering the married state in the near future. In fact, I
have no one in view, and it is exceedingly doubtful whether or not I shall
ever marry.’

"Immediately on hearing this, the
Doctor’s look of abstraction vanished; he sat upright in his chair,
stretched out his hand and said with great animation:

"‘Give me your hand, my boy. You are
just a man after my own heart.’"

This young minister has persisted
with perhaps unnecessary fidelity in the path of celibacy.

The Superintendent could not bear
with anything that savoured of indifference to the claims of honour on the
part of his missionaries. With him, an appointment accepted carried with
it an obligation which honour demanded should be fulfilled. Too often
students, after accepting appointments, would calmly write announcing a
change of intention, with never a consideration of the effect of such
change upon the plans of the Superintendent or upon the interests of the
field. Of course, this made confusion and carried disappointment to all
concerned. In reference to a case of apparently aggravated selfishness,
the Superintendent writes thus vigorously to one of his Conveners:

"I have read Mr. M—’s letter, and I
think, it could only have been written by a man half out of his head. If
he is not satisfied, and will not be satisfied till he gets to the Coast,
then he can go and stay there at his own expense. The Home Mission Fund is
not in existence to gratify whims on the part of unreasonable men. The
missions on the Coast are not such as he can supply, and we must be judges
in such cases. He says he has claims. What are they? For that matter, no
one has claims. He would not do at Denman, for he would have miles and
miles to row, and sometimes in a rough sea. He would not do at Northfield,
for he would have a drive of eighteen miles out to Englishman’s River. At
Cooke, we have Lloyd whose home is on the Coast, and his appointment saved
us travelling expenses. Pender would give him constant rowing, and this he
could not do. Mt. Lehman and Surrey require driving amidst roads almost
impassable for four months. Mission is supplied by Thomson whose retention
there saves travelling expenses. Mr. M— was placed at Swift Current
because trains passed there in the daytime. Were he at Gleichen, Sicamous,
or Ashcroft, he would have night trains all the time. This was what he
wanted to avoid. He wanted a mission where there was no driving—he could
not stand the exposure. This we gave him.

"1 write you in this way that you
may know the situation. This man wants the moon, and will not be satisfied
unless you give it to him. I do not think he will do in Banff. Copeland
writes me he did not do well at Saskatoon, and that his money cannot be
collected."

As the work grew, this breaking of
faith on the part of missionaries began to embarrass so seriously, not
only the Superintendent, but the Gonveners in the various Presbyteries as
well, that the matter became the subject of the following overture to the
General Assembly by the Presbytery of Minnedosa, through the Synod of
Manitoba and the Northwest Territories:

1. Whereas ministers and
missionaries have made application to the Home Mission Committee for work,
received regular appointments to fields within the bounds of Minnedosa
Presbytery, and have accepted the same and have in several instances
failed to fill the appointments;

2. Whereas such failures have
embarrassed the Executive of the Presbytery and created friction between
said Executive and the field to which they have been appointed;

3. Whereas the work of the Church in
important fields has been seriously retarded and the cause of Christ
injured by such failures, and

4. Whereas such disappointments tend
to weaken the faith of our people in the general integrity of our
ministers and missionaries, and the vexed delays in supply which
inevitably follow, together with the consequent suspense and uncertainty
of future supply, rapidly destroys the confidence of our people in the
system of supply, and is leading to unrest and dissatisfaction with the
general polity of our Church; Therefore, the Presbytery of
Minnedosa humbly overtureth, etc.

The overture was transmitted to the
General Assembly simpliciter and by the General Assembly was
referred to the Assembly’s Home Mission Committee, and there disappeared
from view. It is an index of the difficulty of administration often
experienced by the Superintendent, that the Synod refused to express
approval of the overture, but transmitted it to the Assembly simpliciter.

Occasionally the Presbytery of
Winnipeg, as the gateway Presbytery and the Presbytery most easily
convened, would be asked to ordain a man en
route to
a Western field. Sometimes the Presbytery, for one reason and another,
demurred. After one such refusal the Superintendent writes to a Western
Presbytery as follows:

"The Presbytery of Winnipeg is too
large—its men are—for so small a matter as the ordination of a minister.
An elephant has a trunk to pick up small things; the metropolitan
Presbytery was made without a trunk. Ordain S— yourselves. It is well that
efficiency does not depend on ordination."

But he never sulked, nor cherished
any feeling of bitterness. The work was too great to permit of anything
paltry in spirit or in policy. Nor was he ever known to cherish any
feeling of bitterness even against a student, no matter how grievously he
had disappointed him. He was ever ready to give a man his second chance.
This spirit is shown in a marked degree in a case which caused very
considerable trouble at the time. A student employed in the Presbytery of
Calgary, left his field without leave from his Convener, and was, in
consequence, refused his Presbyterial certificate to college.

The young man betook himself to an
American college, and, returning the year following, applied to the
Assembly to have his year allowed. The Assembly granted his request, and
the young man was joyfully proceeding on his way. But his Convener was a
man not to be trifled with, and he promptly entered a caveat. The
young man’s course was blocked, and so continued until, upon
recommendation of his Presbytery, the caveat was withdrawn. The
Superintendent writes as follows to his Convener about the matter:

"Enclosed please find the extract
minute of the Presbytery bearing on the Blank case. It was sent me by him,
with the simple request that I give my approval. The Clerk wrote me saying
he thought Blank had been sufficiently punished, and that if you and I saw
fit to release him it would be well. The correspondence with the
Presbytery I have not seen, but judge in part what it was by this
resolution. Nor am I sure it was quite straightforward. I fear Mr. Blank
suffers from ‘lubricity of memory’ occasionally. However, this may be a
lesson to him for a long time, and it may be better to err on the side of
mercy than to hold the balance rigidly for justice. However, write me and
let me know your mind. I told Blank I was sending the extract to you and
that I would write results later."

A second letter closes the incident

"Yours of 11th January was duly
received here to-day, and, as you know, I entirely agree with your ‘sizing
up’ of Mr. Blank. Taking a conjunct view of the whole, however, it is as
well perhaps to err on the side of mercy. I am more and more impressed,
however, with the laxness of some of our young men, and such conduct, if
persevered in, will do much harm. Many of them need a course in Ethics
rather than in Theology."

The financial arrangement under
which missionaries were employed, was often the cause of misunderstanding
and heartburning. It was as follows: Upon recommendation of the
Presbytery’s Convener, or of the Superintendent of Missions, the financial
ability of the field was estimated at so much per week, the balance
required to bring up the amount to full salary was guaranteed by the
Assembly’s Home Mission Committee. It was part of the duty of the
missionary in charge to see that the field implemented its part of the
bargain, and, indeed, that it did its full share in the support of
ordinances.

Not infrequently men were found who
cherished grievances against the Superintendent, the Convener, and,
indeed, the whole Western work, because of the failure on the part of
fields to pay the full amount pledged. In many cases these men were
discovered to be those who had failed, through ignorance or carelessness
or incapacity, to attend with proper diligence to the financial side of
their work, and hence left their fields with their salaries in arrears.
These excited in no slight degree the wrath of the Superintendent. Upon
this subject the following extract from a letter gives us his mind:

"Complaints as to treatment are so
common that one scarcely knows what to say; and they are more common in
other Churches, and rest on a better foundation than in ours. We had a
meeting here with the students last week, when grievances were ventilated,
and the matter of deficits and arrears discussed. I frankly told the men
that there was another side, and gave instance after instance where men
complained where there was no room, because presents made to students
amounted to more than the deficit. Frequently men do not discharge their
whole duty and people refuse to pay, of which instances were given; men
are not acceptable, have not the conditions of acceptable service in them,
and such men are apt to have arrears. If in every case these are to be
paid, then we must cease to employ them. Here one man has arrears every half year,
and yet has a grant of five dollars a week; another follows him and has no
arrears, and yet has no grant at all, does not ask any. Should the Home
Mission Committee pay a grant of five dollars arrears and all? I doubt
it."

The meeting referred to was held in
Manitoba College and was the climactic result of accumulated grievances on
the score of arrears. A member of the Home Mission Committee who was
present at that indignation meeting, thus describes it:

"The room was filled with men hot
and apparently thirsting for vengeance. A sympathetic professor occupied
the chair. It looked like a bad half hour for the Superintendent. The
sympathetic professor stated the reasons for calling the meeting—a growing
feeling of dissatisfaction with the methods of administration of Home
Mission work. Many students had suffered financially, some so seriously as
to be prevented from continuing their college course. There was a strong
feeling that something ought to be done. The Superintendent was listening
eagerly.

"‘That’s right,’ he said shortly,
when the professor had finished. ‘Now let us hear the facts.’

"The facts were slow in coming. At
length up rose a student, modest, with the reputation as a hard worker.
Hesitatingly he stated his case. His field had been unable to pay the
amount estimated, and he was the sufferer to the extent of $60. He would
not have spoken, but from a sense of duty. He sat down amid enthusiastic
applause. Encouraged by the applause, student number two rose and,
touching somewhat lightly upon his own case, launched forth a statement of
grievances in general, going somewhat fully into both ancient and recent
history. Another followed and then another, telling with variations the
same story.

"The case looked black for the
administration, and now came the defence. All waited for the
long-looked-for opportunity to ‘heckle’ the Superintendent. But the
opportunity did not come that afternoon, nor ever, for in not more than
half a dozen sentences the Superintendent had them on the defensive by
enunciating two principles. First, it was the duty of the missionary to
keep his Convener informed of the financial condition of his field, so
that any discrepancy might be promptly attended to. Secondly, the supreme
end of the Church in conducting Home Mission work was not the furnishing
of students with the means of completing their college course. That part
was purely incidental. Then he proceeded to elaborate and illustrate his
first principle. There were cases of real hardship ; for instance, student
number one. In his field frost had cut down the crop, there was no money,
consequently, the field was unable to pay its share. The student was too
modest to complain, though he should have reported. ‘But we all know Mr.
Blank. He should have made a claim for special consideration; such a claim
would have been met.’ (Cheers.) And every such claim would be met when
properly presented. (More cheers.) But there were other students. And for
half an hour he held up to the admiring and delighted gaze of at least a
part of his audience, a series of pictures of men who had left their
fields with salaries in arrears. One with luxurious habits had bought
freely grapes, cigars, etc., but could not pay his board bill. Another was
too spiritually minded to organize a Board of Management, much less
suggest a subscription list. A third was of so studious a turn of mind
that he more frequently wore out the seat of his trousers than the soles
of his boots. A fourth exhausted his energies in attending young ladies to
picnics, Sunday -school and other. (Great applause.) A fifth disgusted his
congregation with slovenly sermons, consequently they ‘would not pay for
slop.’ A sixth came away with a large present in his pocket, leaving the
Home Mission Committee to pay arrears. A seventh— and so the list went on,
gleaming with humour, irony, and now and then with flashing indignation.

"By this time every student was
apparently happy, those with real grievances satisfied that their claims
would be adjusted, the others unwilling to classify themselves in that
terrible list of incompetents. But the real defence of the administration
came in the elaboration of the second principle, and here the
Superintendent turned himself loose on the theme that lay so near to his
heart—the necessity, the opportunity for Home Mission work. Statistics in
regard to country and Church, stories of missionary heroism were poured
forth with marvellous richness of colouring and detail.

"The close was a word of warm
commendation of the missionaries before him who had toiled and suffered in
the work, till they were listening with shining eyes and, I have no doubt,
each with a lump in his throat. Then they gathered round him, each eager
to get that quick, warm, downward grip of the Superintendent’s hand. And
that was the end of that indignation meeting."

But where he could not meet his
missionaries face to face, and where financial grievances were complicated
with questions of rights of Presbytery and of Presbyters, the trouble
assumed serious proportions. This was the case with the Calgary
Presbytery. The fields in this Presbytery consisted chiefly of vast
reaches of sparsely-settled ranching country, of long drawn strips of
railway lines, and of a few sordid and drink-sodden mining camps. The work
was depressing and difficult, the financial returns from mission fields
always precarious and often meagre. The Home Mission grants, therefore,
were always large, and these the Committee sought steadily to reduce.
Under the inspiration of a visit from the Convener or Superintendent, the
fields would promise liberal support, but from any one of a variety of
causes, the failure of crop or of cattle market, the shifting of
population, the inadaptability of the missionary, these promises often
failed of fulfillment. Whatever the cause, all faults were laid at the
Superintendent’s door. He was the scapegoat for all offenders.

An appeal for relief from grievances
was addressed to the Assembly’s Home Mission Committee by the Presbytery,
to deal with which the Home Mission Committee appointed a special
Committee, with Rev. Dr. Laing as Convener. The finding of the Committee
is embodied in the report, of which the following is an extract,
transmitted by Dr. Laing to the Rev. J. C. Herdman, Clerk of the
Presbytery and prince of Home Mission

Conveners:

"It is evident that in past years
many things happened which imposed inconvenience and even hardships on
missionaries. As, however, not a few of these unhappy occurrences have as
far as possible been rectified, and the parties more immediately
interested seem to be willing to let the past rest, while more
particularly under the new arrangement for conducting the Synod’s
business, every effort will be made to prevent the recurrence of such
things, the General Assembly’s Committee does not deem it necessary to
make further reference to the alleged grievances.

"As to the remedies suggested by the
Presbytery, the Committee carefully considered these with the following
result:

"1. They cannot approve of the
suggestion that the whole salary of missionaries shall be guaranteed by
the Assembly's Committee.

"2. They think that any reduction in grants should be
and naturally will be known to the Presbytery, and that the missionary
should be informed of the change; also, that some time should elapse
between resolving on the change and giving effect to it.

"3. That no allowance can be made for Sabbaths during
which a minister is absent from his field except in cases of sickness or
inability to fulfill appointments.

"4. That not only should Presbyteries have a voice in
estimating the amounts required from mission fields and congregations, and
in the appointments made to them, but that the responsibility in these
matters lies primarily and chiefly on Presbyteries.

"5. It was resolved to refer to a small sub-committee
to prepare a plan for meeting travelling expenses from the Eastern
Provinces to Winnipeg; and for expenses from Winnipeg to the particular
field of labour, for which expenses alone the Assembly’s Committee shall
be responsible.

"6. Also it was resolved, with the view of preventing
misunderstandings, to issue to every missionary appointed by the
Assembly’s Committee a commission, stating in detail all the particulars
connected with the appointment, and showing clearly what each missionary
may expect, without reference to the terms of the appointrnent of any
other."

Reading between the lines, it is not hard to see that
the causes of trouble lay in the system rather than in the administration.
In reference to this, which was at the time to the Superintendent a very
painful episode, and all the more because of his high regard for some of
those actively engaged in pushing this appeal, notably the Rev. Angus
Robertson, than whom the Superintendent had no more loyal friend in
after-years, the judgment of the Rev. J. C. Herdman will be illuminating

"The Presbytery of Calgary was formed in July, 1887.
When we met and began to get under way for work, we found ourselves almost
at a standstill caused by the unpleasant fact that so many of the
missionaries of the Presbytery (good men they were, too) had grievances,
real and alleged, which Dr. Robertson was supposed to be, or was
counted to be, responsible for. Actually then, the first year of our life
as a Presbytery had to go to getting together a string of difficulties and
disabilities and setting them at length before the Assembly’s Home Mission
Committee. I was clerk of Presbytery at the time. I remember that many
‘grievances’ disappeared at the telling, but yet a number remained and had
to be taken up seriously. The final answer to all the counts is given in
Dr. Laing’s communication. One or two individual cases of hardship were
dealt with, in a reassuring way, outside this communication. On the whole,
though the grievance list began somewhat pointedly in the use of the
Superintendent’s name, the progress of negotiations showed increasingly
that whatever grievances had existed were grievances against the
conditions, and to a certain extent against the system of work, nowise
against the man who was in the first instance held responsible. Of the
missionaries then, in this Presbytery, who were most insistent and
vehement in their denunciations, one soon after became the most devoted
friend and admirer of the Superintendent, and the other greatly modified
the aspersions in which he had at first abounded."

It is pleasant to think that, for the last decade of
his life, the voice of criticism was never heard from those who wrought
under him or in Cooperation with him in the Western field. Mistakes might
be made, and as the burdens of the ever-growing work accumulated upon his
shoulders mistakes were made, but by that time men had learned to know and
appreciate the single-hearted devotion and the sheer greatness of the man
who was paying out his life to his cause.

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